Thursday, December 30, 2010

Well, 2010 is coming to a close (goddamnit... finally !!!111!!), and up here in Quebec New Year's Day rhymes with folk music. So mix one of Quebec's best folk bands (La Bottine Souriante) and one of Quebec's best metal bands (Groovy Aardvark) and you get this pure Quebecois masterpiece. "Boisson d'Avril" is about all the legends that people found a way to make a quick buck out of, from Richard Glenn's intra-terrestrials living inside Mont St-Hilaire to the Loch Ness monster to Rael's Elohim.

As you can probably tell from the lack of postage, my own EVE scene as been pretty quiet during the holidays. On Boxing Day I was invited for supper at my corpmate Uozag's place, and let me tell you this dude is one culinary mad scientist. Nine courses later (yes, nine!) I was full to the point of critical mass but at least the food was of fine cuisine quality. And right the next day I started a special holiday time Dad Week, and this is ending tomorrow. So yeah, not much EVE time. I did get re-acquainted with Hot Wheels tracks... damn it's great to have boys, I can now justify buying the damn things :)))

So there you go. May 2010 die in a proverbial fire; I don't see 2011 as being anything but better because in my case, it can't be much worse, apart from having important people dying and shit. I wish you all an awesome year full of love, health, wealth, ISK, kills, etc.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Or Armageddon, or Ragnarok, or Judgement Day, or whatever else your religion calls it. So now's the time to buy that mansion you've always wanted, that sweet Lamborghini Murcièlago LP670-4 SV, that Learjet, etc. Am I serious? Well of course not! I just had to find a way to open my blog on this winter solstice. I do take a bit more seriously this wayward rock called Apophis that's supposed to pass us by in 2029, and even more seriously the "keyhole" it's supposed to go through. But enough depressing thoughts for now; if our time comes, it'll come, and if I know in advance that it's coming I'll probably celebrate the event with a Magnum bottle of La Fin du Monde :))

On to EVE business. Because of a really fun impromptu get-together with the Montreal EVE pilots, I had a massive hang-over on saturday so I didn't feel like doing any space travel. Sunday was a bit better but I was still in couch potato mode, and I wanted to get out to see Tron: Legacy. I loved it by the way; if you're looking for a movie with a deep story and you're not really into sci-fi to begin with, this movie is not for you. If you're like me and you're more interested about having your eye balls cook in their sockets, then by all means go see it in Imax 3D... a regular movie screen just isn't big enough! I was glued to the movie from start to finish, and even the credits are cool to watch.

But back to EVE, all I did over the weekend was one skill flip and a couple missions, one on Saturday proving me that "3D environments + hang-overs = bad", and one yesterday. But they've made me come to a conclusion: the Noctis saves a crap load of time and allows to make a lot more ISK, at least in my case. Sometimes I would skip salvaging missions because it was just too tedious for the amount I'd receive, but now I can salvage really quick and then go on to other things. I don't yet know if these ships will be included on the "to suicide-gank" list at the next Hulkageddon (it is an ORE ship after all) but at least the ship does the job it's meant to do in a brilliant fashion.

BMTHOKK event

"WTF is this?" you ask. It stands for "Bring Me The Head Of Kirith Kodachi". Some time later this winter, my fellow blogger Kirith will be celebrating his 2000th blog post and 6 years of blogging. And when Kirith is in a festive mood he celebrates by giving away free stuff! But this time he's putting a twist on it: at a yet unannounced date and time, in a yet unannounced Low-sec system (methinks Amarr regions...), Kirith will cyno his Chimera at a planet and will be gank bait for 30 minutes. Prizes will go to whoever gets the final blow, whoever does the most damage, everyone on the pod mail (fit a SeBo!), and whoever returns Kirith's popsicle carcass back to him. And if Kirith survives the 30 minutes he keeps his stuff; I say he doesn't survive 15!

So do I intend to get a shot at Kirith's sweet loot? Yessiree Bob! Of course it won't be a walk in the park as word will probably spread like wild fire and all of Kirith's readers and their buddies will want a crack at him. And I'm sure he has Carrier V and Triage V or something. Plus with a whole bunch of people coming from a whole bunch of corps and alliances, mayhem will most definitely ensue (yay!). I've been on exactly 4 capital ship killmails (3 carriers and 1 dreadnought) but I must admit that those were pretty fail-fit, and the first carrier and dread were in the same humongous cluster-fuck of lag in my BOZO n00b days. No, Kirith is a true-blue carrier pilot and he'll be a tough nut to crack. But whatever happens one thing is certain: there will be quite a light show for the fictitious inhabitants of that planet. And I suspect that there might be a few Titans showing up to DD the Chimera to bits. Yep, this will be pretty awesome! Thank you Kirith for providing such an awesome event, and may you have many more years of EVE blogging. Now, are you doing the same thing with the Wyvern next time? :))

Fly hard, and kill caps

o7

Edit: I've just read that apparently Apophis is no longer a threat, according to JPL. But who knows about other yet-to-be-discovered rocks....?

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Lemmy Kilmister is just about the same age as my dad, but damn does he rock a shit-ton more! A while ago when some guy decided to camp our wormhole and pop a few expensive ships, the dude mailed me the lyrics of Hall & Oates "Private Eyes"... I answered him with these lyrics >:)

And the tune fits perfectly with what happened tonight in EVE. Once again I decided to hit the near-by Low-sec pipe in the search of something to blow up, and if anything it was deader than yesterday. But instead of flying towards Old Man Star I flew towards the place where I knew something would be happening, the hellhole known as Amamake. And it didn't take me long to find some fun. The second belt I land in a Bellicose is waiting for something... so I made sure his waiting was over! This being Amamake, it's not even worth waiting out the criminal aggro so I look for more targets. A few belts later I start a dance with a Rifter, which could be dangerous if he got under my guns but I made sure he didn't, but just before he bought the farm a Jaguar warped in at a perfect angle and HE got under my guns. I scratched his armor but alas, that was it for my Stabber. But the evening was far from over...

After getting back to HQ I reshipped in a Wensley-approved Rifter and headed to the infamous Mya-Gerper constellation. 2 in local, this could be promising. First belt, nothing. Second belt though, a shuttle of all things is sitting at the belt warp-in... ok that's weird, but the good guy in me hesitates. All of a sudden a Vexor warps in at about 30 from the warp-in point right on a rock. the shuttle finally wakes up and bugs out, and this time even if it's something of a long shot, I warp down next to the Vexor and blow the crap out of him. OK, that was too easy. But when I see The Fit, hilarity takes over !!! I have no clue what this dude was thinking... but I'm thinking that he WASN'T thinking.

Before I start, I have to mention that this is blog post #200. Yay me !!! \o/

The second part of the Incursion expansion is now upon us. The learning skills have finally gone the way of the dodo. My Orca named QNS Grand Antonio (yes, I settled on Montreal's well-known strong man with bus-pulling dreads) is now assembled, fit and ready to rock. I did get a Noctis and trained it to a whopping level III; I may train it to IV to get better tractor range but after a month of industrial skills I need to give some love to combat oriented skills. And now that all the boring skills are done, and all the new ships I wanted are purchased, and I still have a more than decent cushion of ISK, I can now concentrate on doing the thing I love above anything else in EVE: vaporizing player-owned ships, or getting mine vaporized.

I did go on a long solo roam yesterday, but for a patch day it was pretty quiet in Gallente and Amarr Low-sec. The only ship that maybe would have given me a nice fight was a Wolf, but I didn't engage him with my T2-fit Stabber for a few reasons: 1- he was sitting at Zero of a sentry-protected gate while I was orbiting him Vaga-style, 2- even though we targetted each other we didn't dare suffer the wrath of the sentries, and 3- the Wolf dropped a can for me to loot to start the festivities but I'm wise enough not to get within scram range of an assault frig. So after a couple minutes of staring at each other we went our separate ways. I went to a planet to see if he would follow but instead he jumped out or logged out, and I didn't see him after.

A few jumps later I had high hopes of catching another Stabber that was ratting, but he did a good job at avoiding me. The first time I saw him I landed 65km away from him, and when I started approaching him he warped off to another belt. I followed him but where I had warped to 20, he had warped at 100, and I wasn't even fully out of warp that he had warped off again. I was still able to follow him but this time he had had enough of a lead and when I came out of warp he was nowhere to be seen. Damn, am I that scary? Do I have to offer ship replacement to get a fight?!

The only ships I saw after that where a bunch of Harbingers and a Legion camping a gate (yeah, right!). I decided to back-track a bit and head to Old Man Star, but when I jumped in we were exactly 3 in Local. Yep, OMS was dead yesterday. I decided to check the nearby Low-sec systems towards Syndicate but I only saw more empty space, with whoever was in Local either docked up or at POSes. One of my Montrealer buddies, Dandrane, was flying in the area so he first visited OMS which was still dead and then came to meet me, and he got a bit lucky because hot on his tail was an Astarte, Ishtar, Vexor, and a couple more ships I can't remember. But in all, nothing much that Dandrane's Vexor and my Stabber could take on. After another short staring match we both headed to OMS to see if the situation had changed (it had not) and then it was time for me to dock up and hit the sack.

Let's hope I get a bit more lucky getting some much needed The PvP action over the coming weekend.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Alright, I caved in. With the annoucement of the elimination of Learning skills (Halleluia!) I had told myself I would keep training normally for my Orca and apply the skill points towards Minmatar Battleship V. But let's face it, in the past 3 months I've used battleships exactly 3 times, and before that I hadn't touched one since I had trained up for my Sleipnir. I've got so much stuff to train before I can justify Battleship V. So tomorrow after Incursion 1.0.1 hits I will be dumping the points into whatever's left of Mining Barge V, and sprinkle the rest here and there. And after that, apart from maybe the Noctis which I will probably train to only II or III, that will be IT for carebear skills. Forever. Good riddance !!! After I get Industrial Command Ship IV I will start buffing up everything Cozmik already has, beginning with Drone skills. All the support skills to V, the specs to IV, and I won't rest until I get T2 sentries. Technically I can fly an Ishtar, but let's make sure I can REALLY fly one :)

Speaking of Incursion, I was reading stuff on Facebook yesterday when a post from EVE Online appeared: a bunch of Sansha zombies had decided to blob Odatrik, next door to the Rens market hub. Cozmik being only 4 jumps away, I logged in to see what the hell this Incursion stuff was all about. And I will sum it up in one short word: meh. Sure there are lots of ships to kill, but when there's 470+ in system they die quick. Too quick even. And I couldn't get into a fleet because it was a huge mess. I did manage to get the kill shot on one of the Sansha Overlords so I came out 1.8m richer, but I don't think this is something I'll get into. And if you think it's gonna be good salvage, think again. With big numbers in system wrecks were disappearing in seconds, even if there were 40 of 'em. Maybe when the incursions happen farther away from a major market hub? Or when they happen in Low-sec where some capsuleer fratricide will happen... these things happen at planets so no sentry guns.

So there you have it. Tomorrow I can go back to training PvP related skills, at least until my Noctis gets delivered; having uber industrialists in the alliance has its advantages! And I gotta find something to kill... oh damn do I need it !!!

Fly hard

o7

*Edit: due to some nasty hardware failure, Incursion 1.0.1 has been delayed by 24 hours. Let's hope all goes well. Need I remind everyone to set long skills?

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

It's that time once again, when Montreal turns from the gray and brown end-of-November dullness to complete white-out. And this year Mother Nature didn't mess around for the first real storm. Having recently turned into a pedestrian, this morning's walk to work was more like an epic journey and I have to psyche myself up to do it again tonight. At least I don't have to do it again till Friday because I have a training course for my work's new pay system, and that's downtown. I won't take a chance and still leave early because I doubt that all the streets will be cleared of snow.

In EVE, I'm starting to get back into the swing of things after surviving one of the most emotionally draining couple of weeks of my life. I thought separating was bad... HA! Oh well, I've talked about it a bit in last Friday's music post so let's leave that shit in the past and let's look ahead. But yeah, in EVE... as I'm typing this text Cozmik is starting the training of Mining Barge V; No worries, it's the ship skill only. I have sworn that I would never ever point a laser at a rock and I fully intend to keep that promise. If I stayed in my PvP clone the skill would end on Christmas day, but I will surely clone-jump back to my mission hub soon because I'll need ISK after buying some goodies like a few frigs and cruisers to annoy The Entity with (hi guys!), a Domination Warp Disruptor to put in my Rapier (to be used judiciously) and finally the Orca, which is sitting in Rens waiting for my training to end. Now I have to think about a good name for it; I'm sure that "Shamu" or "Killer Whale" are way overused, so those are out. Maybe "Grand Antonio", after Montreal's well-known strong man who could pull school buses with his dreadlocks (no joke!). Write a comment if you have an idea :)

Another thing I have to do is collect enough ISK to keep that Orca stocked and ready to rock, so that means oodles of spare ships, mods and ammo. And speaking of ammo, what about them T2 rounds! Finally, Quake isn't just a good FPS game by id Software anymore. I sense a Gank Cane fleet in my future! And I'll also have to test rockets because I haven't fired a single one since the changes brought by Incursion. And through all this I have to survive work, training for work, having my boys this weekend and walking through snow drifts. Yeah, interesting week :))

Friday, December 3, 2010

Tomorrow will mark the 17th anniversary of the death of Maestro Frank Zappa, so of course I have to post something from him. He may be gone, but his music will last forever.

EVE front: well, nothing much happened because I've had a crazy week in Real Life. I've had to grab my financial bull by the horns and body-slam the fuck out of it. Yep, it's called bankruptcy. The downside: no more car for a while; it was actually the reason why my finances started sucking. The upside I feel a helluva lot lighter! Other things will be happening in the near future as I will be moving just before April 1st, but I'll let the dust settle and not think about that too much for now. Holidays first.